Abrasive articles are used in a variety of fields for abrading material from a surface of a workpiece. For example, an abrasive disk may be releasably mounted on a back-up pad for rotative movement by a random orbital sander. When the disk is rotated, and the exposed abrasive surface of the disk is urged against the workpiece surface, material may be removed from the workpiece.
Abrasive disks are typically releasably attached to a back-up pad, which supports the abrasive disk during the abrading process. Several types of abrasive disks have some type of attachment system incorporated into the disk to enable the disk to be releasably attached to a back-up pad. For example, abrasive disks having a layer of pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) on the back surface (the surface opposite the abrasive surface) are typically made by applying a layer of pressure sensitive adhesive on the back surface of the disk.
Another type of abrasive disk includes a textile material on the back surface of the disk. Textile disks are typically used in conjunction with a back-up pad having a plurality of engaging members that are bonded to the attachment surface of the back-up pad. The engaging members on the back-up pad are designed to engage the textile material of the textile disk, to secure the abrasive disk to the back-up pad.
A third type of abrasive disk, known as "stalk disks", include a plurality of engaging members in the forms of inclined stalks. The stalks have unhooked ends, which slidingly intermesh with a textile material on a back-up pad to secure the abrasive disk to the back-up pad. The method used to make stalk disks generally involves a knitting process (such as warp knitting), that produces a woven base layer formed from multi-filament yarn. Spaced stalks are woven into the knitted base layer, and are inclined with respect to, and project away from, the base layer. The woven stalk material may then be laminated to an abrasive sheet to produce an abrasive article.
A fourth type of abrasive disk involves providing an abrasive sheet having a first major surface including a means for abrading the surface of a workpiece and a second surface, which includes a plurality of projecting stems that enable the stem to releasably hook an opposed engaging structure, such as a loop-type textile material included on a backing pad.
While all of the above-mentioned systems used for attaching abrasive articles to backing pads provide acceptable attachment systems, they each suffer from one or more significant disadvantage. For example, the thickness of a PSA layer is often critical to the performance of a PSA abrasive disk. Accordingly, sophisticated, expensive machines are required to control the coating of PSA's to abrasive articles. Additionally, suitable textiles for hook and loop-type fastening systems are generally expensive, especially when compared to pressure sensitive adhesives. Thus, adding textile materials to the back side of disposable abrasive articles increases their cost. Furthermore, adding textile materials to the back side of abrasive articles requires unique, sophisticated equipment. Likewise, the raw materials used to make stalk disks are expensive and require sophisticated manufacturing and material handling systems.
Similarly, although expensive textile backing pads can be reused, when used with attachment hooks provided on the back side of abrasive articles, these systems still require the inclusion of a hooking material on the back side of abrasive articles. As can be appreciated, this adds an additional cost element to abrasive articles using such an attachment system.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an abrasive article attachment system and method, which eliminates the need for providing a separate attachment mechanism to an abrasive article and thus eliminates the cost associated with additional manufacturing steps.